I <3 U, K?

He chuckled, expression incredulous.

"What makes you think I wouldn't? I mean, come on, with all the shit I see, I assumed something like that could happen too."

He paused.

"Like the Phobia Few. Dude, of course I believed you."

Justin smiled gently, tapping a random rhythm on the table, though not from impatience.

"I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't."

"Alright, just had to make sure. Cuz Alexis still acts like she doesn't know me and that this whole thing never happened. She's like two different people. Makes me feel kind of isolated sometimes...Never mind."

The waitress returned, carrying the soda and water on a tray.

"One coke and one bottled water. You guys want menus?"

James shrugged and turned to Justin.

"I'm not that hungry right now but if you are I'll have something."

The waitress waited patiently.

"I eat when I'm confused." Justin informed randomly. It was a miracle that he wasn't obese yet. Maybe that's cause you fight for your life on a regular basis, huh, Jubby? Seriously. "Yeah, some menus would be great, thank you."

He smile gently at the waitress. So far, she didn't seem like an assuming, close minded bitch. Which was an improvement on his daily life so he wanted to keep it that way for a while.

He picked up his drink and took a sip.

"Alexis?"

James sighed and let his head drop into his hands.

"Yeah. Her name's Alexis when she's Awake. You know, the anorexic chick who goes to our school. That's who she is. Big surprise there, right? She won't have anything to do with me. Thinks I'd wreck her reputation. She's quite the charmer."

"And she used to be all over me too, when she was Rowan. Kinda creepy. Like she was trying to seduce me. But she gave up after about a month of knowing me. By then I knew you, so I wasn't desperate for human interaction. It was obvious that a relationship with her would be...hellish to say the least."

"Ugh, her." Justin scrunched his nose in disdain. "She's a real bitch. Hated her since I saw her face, really."

He shook his head.

"And you were seriously thinking of being with her? Why the hell would you even consider that? She's a fuckin' booby trap."

James shrugged and stirred the ice in his drink with the straw.

"She was the first person who actually seemed like she wanted to be with me. I'm not exactly spilling over with options, you know? I'll admit, the first night I became Lucid and she was there, smiling at me and being all clingy, I felt wanted for the first time in...years. But then the very next day, when we met up to get our Bindings...she looked at me with so much disgust and disappointment once she realized who I was. The nerd from her math class. And I saw her for what she is. After that day, I was always hesitant and confused about letting her...cling. And then I told her to stop, because you showed me that there were...that I could be with someone who...cared."

He had said this all so quietly that he almost dared to hope that Justin hadn't heard it all. And he still hadn't met Justin's eyes since the waitress had asked them if they wanted menus. It was a bit of a sore topic, and he didn't like talking about it. It made him sound like that much more of a loser for even considering Rowan as girlfriend material.

Justin nodded as James spoke, idly stirring his drink with the straw. When he was finished, Justin took in a deep breath. This kid needed a pep talk and a new outlook on himself.

"Well, I can see that. School kinda pushes us to grow up and be with someone. Hell, I would get so much pressure from people about "finding a girlfriend" or "settling down" and shit like that. And you're right, it's hard to find someone." He shook his head. "I swear to God, the girls at our school think I have AIDS or something."

It was a bit surprising to James that Justin could actually relate to him on this. He had expected him to tell him how stupid it had been to consider Rowan, or how stupid it was that he let himself get to be the kind of person who had so few options.

He looked up as the waitress approached, bearing two slightly crinkled menus.

"There you go. I'll be back to get your order in a few minutes," she smiled, before walking through some doors at the side of the restaurant, where the kitchen probably was.

"Thanks!" James called as she disappeared behind the doors.

"Yeah girls seem to be like a hell of a lot more trouble than they're worth," James muttered as he flipped open the menu and began scanning the contents.

"Yep. Guys are just so much simpler, ya know?" He looked down at the menu. "Probably because we are guys. We understand each other, to an extend."

He shrugged.

"Still. Not totally sure if I'm gay or not."

James smiled a little to himself. If they had been having this conversation online, he would have replied with something like ,"Hey I'm not sure either. But if you want, we could help each other find out."

But sadly, they weren't having this conversation online and he didn't have his laptop to hide behind.
So all he could really do was nod and mumble, "Yeah."

And if Hipster knew him at all, he would totally follow that train of thought anyway.

The menu suddenly became a fascinating specimen to be studied diligently.

Justin grinned. James felt the same. Good. He wouldn't mind exploring the idea a bit with the guy, that was for sure. Truth be told, James wasn't exactly the least attractive guy in the school. Not that Justin went around judging guys and rating them on a scale of one to ten (James was a nine, by the way), he just noticed that the blond was definitely one of the more appealing guys. And Justin wasn't shallow or anything, but he knew he was attractive enough as well. So, if James wasn't very certain on his... playing field, Justin would be a good candidate to help him figure it out. I mean, it's not like he was that really big guy in their computer class with the sweaty hands and beat red face no matter what the guy did.

Plus, they were at least 30 minutes in from the point of meeting and they hadn't torn at each other's throats yet, hadn't even insulted the other. That was a good sign. Beat their previous record of 23 minutes. That was in AP History class with the sub. They tried to make a good first impression on subs, then spew biting comments back and forth once the person's back was turned. Common courtesy and whatnot.

As James sat across from him, captivated by his dingy menu, Justin gave him another, closer once over. Yep, he'd cross the road for that. He wasn't exactly muscular or thin, just... lean. James would probably call himself scrawny while Justin would call him slender. And art is to the eye of the beholder or whatever. So no, James wasn't bad looking at all. The glasses that he used to wear were replaced by contacts a while back and Justin didn't know if they had some special moisturizing shit going on but they really did bring out the blonds' eyes...

Okay, that sounded gay.

But hey, he just wanted to appreciate what was in front of him. The styled hair, the neat clothing that was almost formal. That cute habit of darting his eyes up and Justin every now and then to see if he was still staring and oh shit he'd been staring.

Justin cleared his throat and tore his eyes from James, looking at his menu. Huh. It really was kinda interesting.

James felt like he was slowly melting under the growing awkwardness between them. He didn't know what to do. What to say. And he'd read over the menu five times now. He practically had the entres memorized.

And Justin had totally been staring at him for a good minute just now.

It really wasn't helping.

But God it was kind of cute how he cleared his throat and looked away, like a kid caught in the act of staring into a chocolate store window for too long.

But that was kind of creepy, comparing Justin to a hungry little kid that wanted to wolf down a square of fudge or something.

God this was just getting weirder.

He nearly sighed in relief when the waitress returned, looking at them expectantly with a small pad of paper and a pen ready.

"You guys ready to order?"

James swallowed and scanned the menu again.

"Uh, I'll have the chicken parmesan." There was no way he'd be able to swallow a bite of it.

She nodded and took it down in her notebook.

"And you?" she asked, turning to Justin.

Justin looked up at her and gaped. Then looked back down at his menu and scanned it quickly, stammering like and idiot the whole time.

"Uuuh, uhm... Uh... The..." He huffed in frustration. "Crud..."

Shaking his head in exasperation, Justin handed her the menu but didn't look at her, embarrassed for his little screw up there.

"I'll just take a steak or something. Medium." he paused. "....Yeah, steak."

The waitress smirked at his peculiar attitude but collected their menus and walked back to the kitchen without a word.

"I hope this one isn't gonna talk..." Justin muttered to himself.

James chuckled softly. Well, Justin was at least half as flustered as he was. That was good. He didn't want to be alone in his awkwardness.

And now he didn't have a menu to pretend to read.

This meant he would have to talk again.

He sighed.

"Damn I wish this were as easy as it was online. How is it that we never ran out of stuff to say when we didn't even have anything to talk about? And now I can't even think straight."

Justin chuckled at the wording. "I'm gonna try and not inflate my ego with your last sentence and try and explain to you why we can't in very simple wordage, okay?"

He tapped his fingers on the table for a moment, organizing his thoughts.

"... Alright, so, the thing about the internet is that you can lie. You can lie, lie, lie, until you're blue in the face and the other would never know. And they can lie back. They could say one thing to you through the internet, but say something completely different to themselves, and you'd be none the wiser. The internet is like having a wall of bullet proof glass between you and whoever. Even if you can't trust the person, you can trust the wall."

He took a sip from his drink.

"I'm not saying you can't trust me, I'm just saying."

James nodded and sighed.

"Yeah I guess that's a big part of it. It's also a lot easier to stretch out a conversation in a chatroom, I've noticed. You can just keep talking nonsense and it turns into actual conversation," he said, stirring his drink slowly with the straw. The ice clinked against the sides of the glass softly.

"Exactly." Justin enunciated with a jab of his finger. "On the internet, you can Google new topics if you must. But in person, you have to whip out your phone. And that's just plain rude."

He grinned and tipped back his glass to take another sip from his suddenly alarmingly empty glass and frowned as only cold ice cubes met his lips. Setting the glass down he folded his hands in his lap and huffed.

"Small talk definitely isn't one of my stronger suits. Lovely weather today, isn't it?"

"Indeed. The clouds block out the sun and actually make it bearable to go outside for once. And it smells like rain. Just love it."

And now he was out of things to say.

(Oh James stop being such an awkward unsocial dork. TALK MORE.)

Justin licked his lips. Time to take another step. Or leap. Depends on how James took it.

"So... all things considering, would you consider, you know... being in a relationship... with me?" Justin cleared his throat and looked down, his checks flushing and spreading the heat to his neck. He could have totally and majorly screwed this up with that one question.

And it wasn't like he expected James to say yes. I mean, after all the shit Justin had done to him, like the Nair in his underpants during gym class. Or when he'd spat into his Koolaid during lunch. Or when he'd purposefully lost James' test when the teacher had him collect it. He was an utter dick.

James blinked, heat rushing to his face in seconds. He had not been expecting that.

"I-...yeah. Yeah I would."

He nodded, waiting to see if Justin would look up or not.

"I mean...dude, how could I not? You know me better than anyone else, and that's saying something. I won't let our stupid rivalry get in the way of that, I can definitely put it behind me now. I mean in a way, we both got...enjoyment out of it. We liked hurting each other. Can you imagine how much better it could be if we're not hurting each other but actually...yeah."

James could have put that way more delicately. And he hadn't meant that to become an innuendo at the end. He just hoped Justin would get the gist of it.

Justin snickered at the last sentence. He knew what James had meant, he just wanted to act like a kid for once.

"Other activities? Pleasurable activities?" he grinned cheekily as he teased the blond. "Like what? I'm all for anything, Blue."

James coughed lightly and he reddened further. He coudln't think of a comeback for that. The words wouldn't come.

It was of course at this point in time that the waitress made her entrance, bearing two steaming plates.

"One chicken parmesan and one medium steak," she said, smiling wryly at Justin as she set down the food. And then she took a glance at James.

"...You okay kid?"

He nodded quickly, cursing his stupid red cheeks to hell.

The lady glanced from Justin to James, then walked away chuckling and shaking her head a little.

Justin didn't bother muffling his mild chuckle.

"You're so cute." he murmured to James with a wink, before jabbing a knife into the steak.

"Hell, I could list at least five ways you're adorable while cutting this steak without missing a beat." he grinned to himself, then fiddled with the fork while trying to remember which hand he was supposed to hold it in.

"It'd be a piece of cake, babe."

Let's see what that nickname did.

Okay he had to get himself under control. Seriously. This was going from bad to worse. And Blue had the audacity to get enjoyment from his torment.

This had to end.

Now.

Mustering all of his inner strength, James managed to control his face and raise an eyebrow, pulling on the cool mask that his father lived in.

"Is that so? Then why are you cutting your steak with your left hand?"

He pwned at this. So utterly and completely.

The chicken parmesan went untouched.

"Che, wow, I'm in for it now!" Justin cooed, grin widening. "And I've never been sure which hand you hold the fork in. Sorry, I was raised in a hospital that was sometimes a butcher. Never learned proper rich-person etiquette." he finished with a laugh, setting down his silverware to take a drink. The ice had melted supplying him with some cooler water.

"Gotta remember a man's roots."